DECAY AND DESOLATION. 403 



our interest and amusement had used to be the numerous 

 beetles abroad then in search of their provided winter homes ; 

 but their activities now, as they crept rustling amongst the 

 fallen leaves, seemed suggestive only of a heavy presentiment 

 that our asylum would speedily be less secure than theirs. 



But amidst these deepening tokens of decay, within doors 

 and without, one was, to me at least, more perceptible, more 

 heart-saddening than them all. Lucy, my little cousin, of 

 whom I was to take care she, too, in her early spring-time, 

 was overtaken by autumnal blight. The warning tokens which 

 had first attracted my attention on the evening of my uncle's 

 departure, now went, now came came at last in form not to 

 be mistaken. The cough the hectic flush the sparkling eye 

 the childish beauty, wearing now an almost unearthly bloom, 

 now a faded pallor, which bespoke too plainly its mortal charac- 

 ter, all these told me, though hardly would I believe their tale, 

 that I should not long have my little cousin to take care of. 



One cheerless rainy afternoon in November we were all as 

 usual in the kitchen ; Dolly seated by the dull fire, darning 

 stockings, and wiping now and then her large round specta- 

 cles, which from the damp atmosphere or some more imme- 

 diate cause, seemed from time to time to grow dim ; Caleb, 

 opposite, reading a religious tract one of those which the new 

 preacher had distributed ; I and Lucy standing by the window 

 watching the heavy rain-drops and the light brown feathery 

 leaves falling in a mingled shower from a deciduous cypress, 



